Research
Historical Context
Refugee camps date back so long ago. The earliest recorded refugees and refugee camps were the Israelites in the Bible, in the book of Exodus, after God freed them from the rule of the ruling Egyptian Pharaoh (this was 1400 B.C.). But not until the early nineties were there barely any recordings of women and their experiences in refugee camps.
In the 1940s, the Nazis gained a lot of power and they targeted all Jews, both men and women, for persecution and eventually death. From the US Holocaust Museum Collection, Doris Greenberg describes her experience, “The regime frequently subjected women to brutal persecution that was sometimes unique to the gender of the victims.” Certain camps and areas within camps were designated specifically for females. Over 100,000 women had been incarcerated in Ravensbrück. The Germans and their collaborators spared neither women nor children–Jewish or non-Jewish–in conducting mass murder operations. During a series of deportation operations, pregnant women and mothers of young children were consistently labeled as “incapable of work”. “They were sent to killing centers, where camp officials often included them in the first groups to be sent to the gas chambers.”
In the 1960s, Guatemala experienced a thirty-six-year civil war that devastated the Central American country in many ways, but one particularly brutal campaign by the government’s army stood out. An estimated 150,000 people were killed or “disappeared” in a three-year-long campaign to extirpate an ethnic group suspected of supporting anti-government rebels. Mostly women were “snatched off the street or dragged out of their homes were often summarily executed and dumped in unmarked graves. They are called the “disappeared.” Even though these women were not in camps they still suffered a great deal.
Pulling the focus to Afghanistan, in the late 1970s, it experienced one of the world’s largest refugee crises. According to the Forced Migration Review, “Between the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the present day, one in four Afghans has been a refugee.” More than six million Afghans were driven out of their homes and their country by violence, conflict, and poverty, which spurred a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Now, many women and girls have to work harder than before because a lot is on the line for them. Their rights to education, employment, movement participation in public life, and freedom from violence were no longer being recognized.
During the 1980s and early 90s, religious schools called madrassas became popular with Afghan refugee populations because they were seen as the “only form of education and discipline for refugee boys” The boys learned Koranic study and sacrifice rather than traditional school subjects such as mathematics or science. Soon these refugee families realized that “the madrassas proved to be ripe breeding grounds for the Taliban movement.” The results of these young boys being groomed under the Taliban made the lives of girls in camps worse because they had to follow the strict and harsh rules that the Taliban was putting in place.
From the late 1990s to the 2000s, female refugees in Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and Israel suffered and were being treated inhumanely. Specifically in Syria, women had a lot riding on them. A woman named Hannah was one the main focuses of the ‘Woman Alone’ issued by the UN agency for refugees. ‘Hannah – Are there other women like me?’ Her husband is still in Syria and she is so focused on supporting her family while working as a housekeeper, only eating once a day to ensure that her children are well-fed. And because she was part of such a busy schedule it never occurred to her that other women were going through the same things she was. Hannah’s journey as a refugee woman has been enormously difficult. “She is determined to provide for her family, despite her fears, and has overcome much.” The UN Agency goes in depth stating that, “many women say the stress of exile has been exacerbated by assuming new burdens of responsibility. Many previously relied on men to provide for the family, handle business outside the house, and make family decisions.”
In the 2010s, 2016 specifically, Jane Freedman wrote about the sexual violence female refugees are enduring, saying, “The current refugee "crisis" in Europe has created multiple forms of vulnerability and insecurity for refugee women including various forms of sexual and gender-based violence.” Addressing the sexual violence in refugee camps and how it has become a major problem for many women and girls. In Australia, nurses and midwives were in unique positions to promote the sexual health of refugee women during and after the resettlements of many communities. However, many female refugees were not very open and honest about their sexual health which led to the reduction of health professionals in the camps. “Young refugee women are uncertain of who to turn to get help, and this can be worsened by the tension between integrating into a new country and upholding cultural practices”
Recently
In 2020, "Women represent almost half of the 244 million migrants and half of the 19.6 million refugees worldwide." Human rights advocates called various demonstrations of the gender apartheid imposed on Afghan women after the Taliban banned women from attending Universities and working in NGOs. The Taliban issued decrees that required women to be covered in public, pushed women out of government positions, and banned women from traveling without a male relative. The ban on women attending universities, on top of an earlier ban on girls’ secondary school, means that girls in Afghanistan cannot receive an education after primary school. Women’s Refugee Commission representative Gayatri Patel expresses her concern saying, “The impact this has had on girls’ lives is devastating and the implications for their futures — and Afghanistan’s future — are dire,” continuing, “Afghanistan and its people cannot and will not prosper if half of their population is denied their basic rights, including the right to receive an education and contribute to Afghan economy and society.” Women like Patel have called out to influential people, leaders, and the United Nations to recognize the promises they made to support Afghan women yet the Taliban has steadily chipped away at women’s rights for many years.
Where is the media?
Recently, in 2022-2023/ongoing, women are being separated from their families. The suffering of female refugees relates to political issues, racial justice, and religion. The media’s disinterest in this injustice is also another big issue and it does not help and has a huge negative impact. Female refugees are and they have been if not the most vulnerable group in refugee camps. Today, in the year 2023, more popular in the media, the world has seen Ukrainian women, Sudanese women, Congolese women, and Palestinian women suffer great losses and it has shed some light and awareness on the issues and problems they are facing daily as displaced people.